Profiles in cowardice: the 2012 Obama platform

Rather than acknowledge the deadly truth about how the anti-gun policies he promoted as a state senator have utterly failed the good people of Chicago, Obama is hoping that a not-so-subtle change in the Democratic Party platform will sweep it all under the rug.

Recall back in 2008, Democrats attempted to downplay then-candidate Barack Obama’s hostility toward gun owners and our Second Amendment freedoms by putting this line in their party’s platform (emphasis added):

We believe that the right to own firearms is subject to reasonable regulation, but we know that what works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne.

In this year’s platform, however, Team Obama has shortened this passage to read:

We believe that the right to own firearms is subject to reasonable regulation.

Gone is any mention of Chicago. That’s because life in the criminal utopia that Obama helped build there is not pretty.

When he was a candidate and lawmaker from Southside Chicago, Barack Obama endorsed a complete ban on handgun ownership.

He also voted to ban most commonly owned rifles and shotguns, and even voted against legal protections for people who used firearms to defend themselves or their families from deadly attacks.

Despite a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that declared Chicago’s gun ban unconstitutional, the city’s stifling restrictions on gun ownership make it nearly impossible for law-abiding citizens to use a firearm for self-defense.

So far this year, 369 people have been murdered in Chicago despite the city’s draconian gun control laws. That’s roughly a 30 percent increase from this same time last year.

In fact, Chicago is on pace for a record 490 homicides in 2012, which would not only make it the deadliest big city in the United States, but also as deadly as notoriously crime-ridden Bogota, Colombia.

Things are so far out of control in Chicago that the city’s mayor, former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, has resorted to calling in the FBI for help.

Obama’s anti-gun policies have left good, law-abiding people defenseless in the face of Chicago’s crime wave. The average police response time in Chicago is nearly four minutes. That’s an eternity for a disarmed, single mother trapped in fear behind a bedroom door. Or an elderly person, whose only means of reasonable self-defense is a firearm.

Yet in spite of this, President Obama is still calling for stricter gun control laws and a national ban on semi-automatic firearms in his 2012 party platform. None of which would prevent criminals from obtaining guns. All of which would disarm law-abiding Americans.

Obama’s 2012 party platform makes it clear that if he wins re-election, he will work to bring the same, dangerous anti-gun policies that are destroying Chicago to cities and towns nationwide.

For that reason, November’s election presents a clear choice between our Second Amendment freedoms and fundamental right to self-defense … and the murder and mayhem that Barack Obama helped bring to Chicago, but now wants us all to ignore.

Chris W. Cox is the Executive Director of the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA)and serves as the organization’s chief lobbyist.

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